Didem Leblebici, M.A.

Didem Leblebici

Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences (Kuwi)

Academic Staff Member

Didem Leblebici is a doctoral candidate and research associate at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder). Her research focuses on the sociolinguistic implications of contemporary AI language technologies on language ideologies and multilingualism.

leblebici@europa-uni.de

Office: AM 123

ResearchGate

Office hours take place online. Please send me an e-mail for an appointment.

Research Interests:

  • Language Ideology
  • Human-Machine Interactions
  • Conversational AI
  • Multilingualism / Translanguaging
  • Posthumanist Sociolinguistics
  • Mediated Discourse Analysis

PhD Project: Sociolinguistics and the Entanglements of Technology: Practices, Negotiations and Ideologies of Multilingual AI Voice Assistant Users (Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Britta Schneider, Prof. Dr. Crispin Thurlow)

Read more about research projects at the Chair of Language Use and Migration here.

Edited volume

Journal articles

  • Leblebici, Didem and May Rostom. (under review). "'Alexa learned Arabic': A translanguaging and multimodal perspective on language and media ideologies". Discourse, Context & Media.
  • Leblebici, Didem. (2024).“‘You are Apple, why are you speaking to me in Turkish?’ - the role of English in voice assistant interactions”. Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 43(4): 455-485. https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2023-0072

Book chapters

Academic Blog Entries and Other Publications

  • Lau, Mandy, Didem Leblebici, Britta Schneider. 2022. “Sound-based corpora - histories, sources, biases”. In: Schneider, Britta & Bettina Migge (eds.) Changing Language Ideological Concepts in the Human-Machine Era – Questions, Themes and Topics. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.25867.36649

since October 2021 - PhD Candidate at European University Viadrina

January - May 2024 - Visiting PhD Student / Erasmus+ Trainee at University College Dublin (under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Bettina Migge)

2019-2021 - Master of Arts in Language - Media Society at European University Viadrina
M.A. Thesis: "Language Ideologies in Human-Machine Interaction: A Qualitative Study with Voice Assistant Users"
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Britta Schneider & Dr. Rita Vallentin
Final grade: 1,1 Distinction/mit Auszeichnung

2015-2019 - Bachelor of Arts in English Studies & Media Studies at the University of Bonn
B.A. Thesis: "Gender stereotypes and postfeminism: An analysis of selected digital lifestyle publications on Instagram"

Awards

2023 - First Place in Moodle Competition in Teaching
awarded by Zentrum für Lehre und Lernen in Viadrina

2021 - DAAD Prize for outstanding achievements of international students studying at German universities
awarded by European University Viadrina

  • Language, Migration and Social Media (WS 24/25)
  • Language and Smartphones (WS 23/24)
  • Language in the Human-Machine Era (SS 23)
  • Pragmatics: Language, Context and Meaning (WS 22/23 + SS 24)
  • Fundamental Concepts of Sociolinguistics (SS 22)
  • Language Theories - Approaches and Schools of Modern Linguistics (WS 21/22)
  • Schreibdidaktisches Tutorium für die Vorlesung "Einführung in die Kulturwissenschaften" bei Prof. Klaus Weber (WS 20/21,SS20,SS21)

Conference and panel organization

10-12 July 2024 - Panel “Negotiating (Non)Humanness. Drawing and Crossing Boundaries between Humans and Others”
Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines in Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
with Miriam Lind, Britta Schneider, Theresa Schweden, Lena Späth und Rita Vallentin

21 June 2024 - PhD Viadrilinguistics Summer Workshop for Postgraduate Students at European University Viadrina 
with David Pappalardo

4-5 November 2022 - Graduates' Conference “un:real Spaces of Interaction. Forms of Social Order in the Spectrum of Media-specific Interaction”  in Potsdam / an event within the ZeM’s annual focus on “Digital Realities”
with Clara Kindler-Mathôt, Giacomo Marinsalta, Till Rückwart, Anna Zaglyadnova

October 2020 - Poster session in “B/Ordering Cultures” Conference. Organised by the Cultural Studies Society (KwG) in European University Viadrina

Talks in conferences and workshops

12/2024 “Rethinking Methodologies in Studying Conversational AI Discourse”
Social Sciences and Artificial Intelligence: Theory and Practice in Istanbul University, Turkey

12/2024 Guest lecturer in Hauptseminar “Language Attitudes and Ideologies” by Dr. Maggie Glass in TU Dortmund, Germany

12/2024 "Posthumanist perspectives on sociolinguistics: Navigating the everyday multilingual entanglements in AI voice assistant interactions”
PhD Colloquium by Prof. Dr. Crispin Thurlow in Universität Bern, Switzerland 

10/2024 “”It’s because our accent is weird”: Voice-user interfaces as linguistic authorities in multilingual contexts”
Ideoling - International Symposium on Language Ideologies and Attitudes in Palma, Spain

09/2024 “Between neutrality and authenticity: AI voice assistants as linguistic authorities in multilingual contexts”
Whole Action Conference Language in the Human-Machine Era  / 2-3 September 2024 in UC Louvain, Belgium

07/2024 "Multilingual Entanglements in AI Voice Assistant Technologies" 
Summer School Technography in TU Dortmund, Germany

07/2024 "Language Ideological Perspectives on Human-AI Boundaries"
Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines in Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

04/2024 “Multilingual Entanglements in AI Voice Assistant Technologies”
Graduate Conference School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics in University College Dublin, Ireland

03/2024 Invited talk with May Rostom: "'Alexa learned Arabic': A translanguaging and multimodal perspective on language and media ideologies" 
COST Action Network Language in the Human-Machine Era - Working Group 6: Ideologies, beliefs and attitudes (Online talk)

10/2023 with May Rostom: "'The dialect is provocative, how can they not put it in Egyptian?': Metalinguistic comments about the voice assistant Alexa on YouTube"
Approaches to Digital Discourse Analysis 4 (Klagenfurt, Austria)

07/2023 "Alexa in multilingual polymedia environments: A case study on the role of smartphones in voice assistant interactions"
The 18th International Pragmatics Conference (Brussels, Belgium)

05/2023 "Implications of Monolingual Bias in Superdiverse Societies" (Poster)
Speech Technology Summer School University of Groningen (Leeuwarden, Netherlands)

11/2022 Panel discussion on Conversational AI
Moderation of the panel with the guests Timo Kaerlein, Marie-Theres Fester-Seeger, and Tim Hector
Graduates’ Conference “un:real spaces of interaction” (University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, Germany)

07/2022 "Constructing Language(s) and AI in Voice Assistant Interactions of Turkish-Speaking Users"
2nd International Whole Action Conference Language in the Human-Machine Era (Jyväskylä, Finland)

05/2022 "Language Ideologies in Voice Assistant Interactions: Cultural Constructions of Humans, Machines and Language in Multilingual Settings" 
Posthumanismus. Transhumanismus. Jenseits des Menschen? 7. Jahrestagung der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft / (Graz, Austria)

03/2022 Presentation of PhD Project in Winter School of Sociolinguistics (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Peer reviewer for journal:

  • AI & Society
Academic Staff Members

Contact

Auditorium Maximum (AM)
Logenstraße 4
15230 Frankfurt (Oder)
  • AM 123

+49 335 5534 2738 Leblebici@europa-uni.de